Poll watchers poised to take their places

The job doesn't pay. It's slow and tedious. It requires standing in a designated area for at least five solid hours, without talking to anyone or using your cellphone. And it comes with a dress code.

Even so, thousands of poll watchers will be at various Texas election sites on Tuesday, monitoring the election process for candidates and political parties. It may not be a glamorous assignment, but it has taken on greater relevance in recent years as Democratic Party fears about voter suppression have butted heads with Republican Party alarm bells over possible voter fraud.

If you're one of the 25 poll watchers trained by the Bexar County Democratic Party, your main focus Tuesday will be to make sure that election judges don't improperly turn away your voters. If you're one of the 40 or so local poll watchers representing the San Antonio Tea Party, you're on the lookout for examples of ineligible voters trying to cast ballots.

“Bad procedure is one thing, but our major concern is voter fraud,” said Jon Kaplan, a member of the San Antonio Tea Party, who worked as a poll watcher two years ago. “In 2010, I saw none. Mostly, the election judges are very competent.”

The Texas Election Code prohibits anyone, other than election workers and voters, from entering a polling site unless they've been certified by a candidate or political organization to serve as a poll watcher. Certified poll watchers are forbidden from communicating with voters and cannot bring any campaign materials inside the polling site. They are also prevented from wearing any clothing (such as campaign T-shirts or buttons) that indicates support for a particular candidate or party.

If a poll watcher sees something that they consider a voting irregularity, they are allowed to approach the election judge. If they can't resolve the matter between them, the poll watcher generally calls their campaign headquarters, and a representative from the party (or candidate) alerts the county election administrator. In rare cases, a candidate or party will file an injunction.

Jacque Callanen, elections administrator for Bexar County, describes poll watchers as assets to the voting process.

“From our standpoint, it's a win-win,” Callanen said. “We get to see what their perception is, and we get to see where some of our officials may not be following what we've told them. It's a learning experience for us.”

Some poll watchers spend decades observing the voting process without ever detecting a major procedural error, so the election mistakes they do encounter tend to be ultra-memorable.

Dewar says a poll watcher informed the party several years ago about a local election judge who turned away a prospective voter, saying the voter was not dressed appropriately.

Colin Strother, a political consultant who has managed the congressional campaigns of U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, cites a case this year in Dallas County in which voters went to a consolidated voting location and were given the wrong ballot.

Jesse Garcia, a local Democratic activist, has worked on both sides of the polling-site divide: he's been an election judge since 2002, and he'll be poll-watching on the North Side on Tuesday.

“Years ago, when they used to have TVs at polling sites, there was one on the North Side where they had the TV on Fox News,” Garcia said, noting the politically right-leaning cable network. “There have also been cases of voters coming in with campaign materials and using cellphones.”

The points of contention can be as big as an election judge failing to help a lost voter find their proper precinct or as small as an election judge seemingly allowing campaign workers — electioneering outside the voting locations — from one party greater access to restrooms than workers from the opposition party.

Poll watching sometimes gets conflated with the kind of outside-the-poll monitoring practiced by election vigilantes such as True the Vote, a Houston-based, tea party-affiliated group that scours voter-registration rolls looking for fraud. U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Maryland, recently launched an investigation into the practices of True the Vote, suggesting they are trying to suppress minority turnout.

True the Vote has promised to mobilize a million people around the country — including some officially certified poll watchers — to monitor the polls.